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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

This Year We Wanted To Do Something Different

The Bodacious 12 Days of Christmas is launching on December 1st. It's our first year doing something like this. We have so much to do. So much to bake. In previous years we've had holiday photo contests and "guess how many biscuits are in the jar" contests. This year, we wanted to do something different. There's a few reasons why.

If you've kept up with this blog or you check out our Bodacious Biscuit Love Facebook page, you're aware we made some changes over the summer. Much. Needed. Changes. You can read about that here, here, and here. A lot of these changes happened over the course of 2016.

As we near the end of 2016, I can honestly say these changes have made a big difference. Our efforts are better utilized because we eliminated a lot of what was taking up too much time. We focused more on our local community and a few surrounding towns. We didn't book events every weekend. The list goes on.

The big change that we decided not to make until 2017 was expanding. Right now, all we offer are homemade dog treats. One flavor. That's it. In order to offer more flavors, we'd have to go through the entire process of obtaining product analysis per each flavor and getting the additional flavor/s licensed through the Connecticut Department of Agriculture.

Per flavor, that would cost us a total of $115. In addition, we'd have to pay $80 a year per flavor to renew product licensing.

Long story short, going down the route of adding new flavors wasn't something we wanted to do. Plus, most of the flavors don't ship well and/or can't be shipped during certain times of the year.

We decided to expand in several ways...

1. DIY Dog Mom Projects. With the launch of Our Bodacious Dog Mom Life, one of the focus points is creating relatively simple DIY projects for pet parents. We've already completed a few, but the goal for 2017 is to post one or two per week along with a brief tutorial. And, for most of these projects, there will be a few extra made to offer to the public.

2. Homemade dog treat recipes. Over the summer, we shared our Bodacious Peanut Butter Dog Treat recipe along with our old flavors. In 2017, our goal is to create new recipes every week to share on this blog and our Bodacious Biscuit Love Facebook page. Making your own dog treats is super easy, inexpensive, and you control the ingredients. We're looking forward to experimenting with new flavors and ingredients.

3. Bodacious Blankets, Bandannas, Totes and...whatever else I can sew up. This was something we talked about about a year ago and it's finally going to happen. Over the past year we have received quite a few fabric donations. We also got a couple of sewing machines donations, but unfortunately, neither one of them worked. We decided it would be best if we purchased a new one. This was an out of pocket expense. After shopping around, we finally found one! I am super excited.

4. Bodacious Biscuit Love Bin. So far, we've filled and emptied our Bodacious Biscuit Love Bin twice. This is even before we've put the word out there. In 2017, we want to keep the bin filled so we can help pet parents in our area who have fallen on hard times. I can't even begin to tell you what it feels like to walk into our biscuit room and be able to grab items off the shelf and from the bin to help pet parents in need.

Those are the top 4. I'm sure there will be more. We always find new inspiration lurking behind the corners. We're definitely going to redesign our card, rewrite our mission to include more of what we do, and find one or two more locations in our area to display our goods. And, as always, we'll continue to bake and donate biscuits every week.

While I went off track a bit, the Bodacious 12 Days Of Christmas is our way of debuting some of the great stuff that will be coming up.